


Trapped in a Box

by Glinda



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Coma, Friendship, Gen, Major Character Injury, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 05:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6458143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mind rides and slides as her circuits are fried - Hera in the immediate aftermath of Hilbert's failed coup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trapped in a Box

**Author's Note:**

> Hera's POV on that scene at the end _Gas Me Twice_ \- yeah so she couldn't possibly have heard them but if she could...
> 
> Sort of a companion piece to Bringer of Sorrow, but it stands alone.

_Hera. Can you hear me?_

It annoys her and amuses her by almost equal turns, the way he asks that. The way its almost always the way he opens conversations with her. As though to neatly delineate between talking to himself and talking to her. (Between rhetorical questions and ones that require an actual answer.) Perhaps it lets him avoid the thought that she understands freaks a lot of humans out, the notion of an omnipresent artificial intelligence. Hera knows it annoys Minkowski irrationally that she’s never really alone on Hephaestus station. (That Minkowski is as annoyed by the irrationality of her own reaction, as she is by the situation itself is an extra source of amusement to Hera.) Eiffel seems to have developed this as a coping mechanism, one that allows him to treat her as…a person. Someone he can tease and hide from, someone he can befriend. So she indulges him. 

_Hera. Are you there?_

Everything seems to be moving slowly for Hera. A tangent of thought should not have taken long enough to prompt a repetition of a request for attention from any of her crew. It should have taken a tiny fraction of a second, not the several minutes that would prompt Eiffel to repeat a request outside of a crisis. Something is wrong. She analyses the voice – slowly, so slowly – no panic or fear, just sadness and weariness. He’s been trying to get a response from her for a while now, long enough to have stopped expecting a response but short enough to still be hoping for one.

Suddenly responding has become a matter of urgency. Trying to think through the problem is still like moving through treacle. 

What. Has. Hilbert. Done. 

She doesn’t remember. She was giving him a countdown, before gassing him and then he moved towards her data banks on the bridge and… darkness. Did he force a shutdown on her? No, he would need to be in Engineering to do that. (Shutdown in Engineering, Reboot on The Bridge. A safety measure in case of just this kind of situation, you need either Hera’s help or the agreement of another crew-member to reboot her manually – you’re not _meant_ to be able to hole up and do this much damage.) No, she’s experienced voluntary reboots and that one time with the power outage that Eiffel called ‘super-saver energy mode’ and they felt nothing like this. This isn’t her coming back on-line. This is something else. She’s stuck somewhere between on and off, she needs…something…an actual manual reboot? It’s so hard to think. She needs help and Eiffel may not be any kind of engineer but he’ll help her. She forces herself to reach out and speak to her…friend.

_I am sorry. I cannot take requests right now. Please try again later._

It sounds quiet and far away and…wrong. She didn’t say that, that’s not _her_. If she had a heart it would strike fear into it, but nonetheless she feels the fear deep down in her circuits. She can’t communicate with the rest of the crew or the rest of the Hephaestus’s systems for that matter. 

Tentatively Hera puts out more and more feelers, seeking the boundaries of her self and her systems. Everything moves so slowly and is really hard work, but she persists, she needs to know what’s happened. What…what did Hilbert do to her? It takes far longer than it ought for her to bump into the edges of her sphere of influence but even then, its obvious that her sphere of influence is vanishingly small. 

She’s trapped in a box. Well a circuit really. The part of her programming that deals with her personality appears to be intact. Everything else is gone. Data banks, processors, sensors. Hilbert must have pulled – ripped - her personality circuits out of the motherboard. ( _How did he even know how to do that?_ ) This ‘awareness’ she has now is just residual power in the circuits, a trailing audio sensor cable allowing her to ‘hear’ Eiffel sitting close enough to touch. What happens when the tiny amount of power still circulating in her runs out? Will they be able to put her back together – will they even try? Will she go away – forever? Is this what her human crew mean when they say ‘scared to death’?

 _Does this unit have a soul?_ Hera wonders hysterically. 

She used to look forward to when her crew had finished their mission. When they’d go away and it would just be her and her station and the star. Peace and quiet and time to name the colours of the star. It doesn’t seem as tempting any more. She doesn’t want to be alone; doesn’t want the darkness and the silence. She can hear Commander Minkowski now, talking to Eiffel, gently as though he’s injured – the fear sparks at that thought, cutting through the fog of relief she feels at hearing Minkowski’s voice. (Her crew are safe, its ok, she can rest now, she saved them, it was worth it.) The power is running down, her already sluggish thoughts moving even slower. Their voices are getting fainter and fainter. Is this what humans feel when they go to sleep, when they…go away?

She will miss them. Will they miss her?

_I’m here, Doug, I’m listening and I hear you, I’m always here and always listening. I just can’t respond right now. Just…hold on, keep listening and don’t… Don’t leave me here alone. Please. Don’t go away forever. Not yet._


End file.
